Rust Sells 750,000 Copies, Studio Seeks Solutions for Cheating

Rust, the survival game from the creator of Garry's Mod, has quickly been overtaking its predecessor –– as of today, Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios have sold 750,000 copies of Rust.

Those copies were sold in a month and a half; that's two-thirds of what Garry's Mod sold in eight years. Rust has also been the top-seller on Steam for almost two weeks, placing just above DayZ, according to the Steam sales chart. Facepunch never expected this; it's been a blessing and a curse.

On the Rust Status Report #002, Newman said that "the amount of people playing has kind of given us a sensory overload. We see all these amazing things happening, voices from all directions, ideas, bugs, cheaters.. and we’re scrambling to catch up with everything. So please don’t be offended if we’re not doing what you want us to, if we don’t respond to emails or tweets, if we’re not administrating the servers properly."

And the studio has already begun to implement rules against cheaters. Although the Valve Anti-Cheat system has been effectively banning players intentionally manipulating the game, it's not as responsive as Newman and his team would like. So, they've been reaching out to several different companies for a solution to quelling the game's dissenters. But Newman wants to be cautious.

"The very last thing we want to do is rush out a system that accidentally bans legitimate users – and then have to un-ban everyone," he writes. "There needs to be no doubt that a specific steam account has been used to cheat.

We are still adjusting our trajectory, there’s still a lot we want to do."

Mike Mahardy is a freelance writer for various outlets. To hear him rant about Syracuse basketball, you can follow Mike on Twitter.